Chapter Text
Pyrrhus
Pyrrhus waited outside Gem, sitting tailor-style on a rock where Caiden had left him. The Chosen of Journeys assured him someone would be along shortly, and he’d know who it was he was supposed to go with when they arrived. Sidereals.
The south was merely hot, and very dry, this deep into Descending Air, so it wasn’t the burning furnace this direction usually was. Even so, he was glad he’d only worn the lightest of his linen wrapped tunics.
It was edging towards sunset when a mounted man rode up, peering out from under the ubiquitous southern brimmed hat at him. Another horse, a slim grey with a dish face and proudly arched neck, trailed behind on a lead. The man swung down easily and Pyrrhus caught the flash of orichalcum from a sling on his back.
“Reckon you’re the fellow I’m meant to round up,” the man said. “Can’t think of any other reason a body with sense would be sittin’ out here in the sun.”
“I imagine so.” Pyrrhus slid down off the rock, surreptitiously stretching the cramps out of his legs by picking up his packs. Mistress’ attentions still hadn’t faded completely, despite nearly a year passing, and his bones ached. “Are you late, or am I early?”
“Star-blessed leave you here?”
Pyrrhus nodded.
“Then I’m late. Apologies; took longer’n’I thought to get out this way.” The man smiled, warmly and genuinely, around a piece of hay he was chewing on. He stuck out a hand. “Name’s Caleb, Caleb Raith, of the Dawn.”
“V’neef Pyrrhus, Zenith.” Pyrrhus exchanged grips with the other Solar, regarding him steadily. Caleb was maybe a hair shorter than he was, with a slightly slimmer build but with no lack of muscle for it. He didn’t look like the usual Southern dusky stock; his paler complexion was only burned tan and his wavy dark brown hair had sun bleached streaks in it, what Pyrrhus could see beneath the hat. Caleb’s eyes were honey brown and bright, with plenty of laugh lines crinkling the corners. His grip was firmly confident and he held it just long enough to take Pyr’s measure in turn, then let go with a nod and a swish of the heavy canvas longcoat he wore.
“Y’ know how to ride?” Caleb asked, untying the grey and offering the reins to him.
“Yes, though it’s been awhile.” Pyrrhus accepted them and went over to the grey to make friends, petting the horse’s suede nose.
“This is Rain. He’ll do you right. Got a lotta fire when y’can light it, but he’s as lazy as a temple cat.” Caleb swung up on his own mount, a buckskin of a heavier build, holding his reins loosely in one hand. “Mine’s Dirt. He’ll steal your hat, if ya let him.”
“Hello, Rain,” Pyrrhus murmured. The grey gelding whuffed into his chest and nudged him, hard, and Pyr staggered a step back with a smile. The packs he secured to the back of Rain’s saddle then mounted up. “Ready--?”
“Aye. This way. Gotta ways to go tonight before we can camp.” Dirt and Caleb wheeled around to the east, heading deeper into the sandy wastes. Pyrrhus felt the glitter of essence on his senses like a dusting of snow against his skin, and power like faerie lights danced along the hooves of their mounts and the lines of Caleb’s reins. “You been t’the south before?”
“Yes. Not for long, in either visit however.” Pyrrhus brought Rain up alongside Dirt. “Caiden didn’t tell me about the reason for me being here. Will you enlighten me?”
“Aw, y’know the star-blessed. Never givin’ ya a straight answer when they can talk you in circles instead.” Caleb shrugged. “They wanted you here, tol’ me to come get ya, an’ tol’ me the place t’go after, so I’m here. Figger we’ll get more as we go. Was there something you needed doin’ elsewhere?”
Pyrrhus thought of the Meridian Isle, green and verdant and free of the threat of yet another Deathlord. Of the city on Meru, thriving under Akaris’ leadership. Angelline and his family safe with Queen Zaela. “Nothing more than any man must do, when he has a family to protect.”
“Ah. Damn, you manage… this? And a family?” Caleb gestured vaguely at his forehead and then out at the horizon beyond where the Sun was making its way towards the Pole of Water. “I ain’t doin’ too badly just with me’n’Dirt.”
“Angelline is exceptionally patient,” Pyrrhus shrugged. “But I think even she tires of me around continually. This is not bad timing, so long as it isn’t too long.”
“Doubt it,” Caleb said. He spat out the wisp of hay to one side and fished in a pocket for a moment. “Once them Sids get involved, things tend to explode. Give it a day or two for the fuse to light an’ I bet somethin’ll pop up fer us to deal with proper wise.” He stuck a cigarette between his lips, and leaving the reins looped on the saddle pommel while Dirt paced along, lit it with a flicker of Solar essence. “You’ll be home before the month’s out. I’d bet you a dinar, but I don’t hold with gamblin’.”
“Neither do I,” Pyrrhus said, a little bit of a grin growing to match Caleb’s.
Caleb led them down into the dunelands and along a dry riverbed, explaining his knowledge of the territory as they went, and the various little gods that stewarded it, the elementals that called it home. He’d been living rough more or less his entire life in this area of the South (more northerly than Gem, he admitted, but not so much).
“How long since your Second Breath?” Pyrrhus asked as the horses scrambled up a rocky slope and into an area of wind-sculpted rock walls and pocket canyons. The sun had nearly touched the horizon now, and Pyrrhus hoped they’d stop soon.
“Oh…” Caleb scratched under the band of his hat idly. “Musta been ‘bout… five or six years now? What about you?”
“Almost fifteen years.” Pyrrhus did some swift mental calculation; Caleb had exalted just after the Jade Prison had broken, spilling its cache of Solar Exaltation shards at the bottom of the Inland Sea. Pyrrhus well remembered the hekatonkheire forcing him down to his knees as he fought with blades to defend the prison from the underworld’s monster. Not that he had wanted the prison to remain intact, but he didn’t want the deathlords to get their hands on it either. His defense had been in vain, as half the shards had been captured anyways.
“Sheeeit, you been doin’ this that long? You don’t look any older n'me.” Caleb did look young; maybe just at his third decade.
“I’m told that those Chosen by Ignis Divine can live several millennia - and they don’t age until the last hundred years or so.”
“Damn.” That seemed to rob Caleb of his words for awhile, as he navigated the twists and turns of the canyons.
They turned into one passageway that sloped upwards and dead-ended into a bubble-like grotto. Green, the first green Pyrrhus had seen since stepping through the gateway in Yu-shan, greeted them. Thick grass and ferns and succulents grew in profusion around a small spring-fed pool, climbing plants draped over it like a veil.
Caleb thunked to the ground and led Dirt over to the pool to drink; Pyrrhus cautiously followed suit. “This place b’longs to a friend o’mine, Rivela. It’s one of her springs. We’ll be safe for the night here, at least from things what aren’t natural.”
“And things that are?”
“I sleep light an’ carry two pistols,” Caleb grinned. Dirt drank his fill and Caleb led him off to one side, untacking the buckskin stallion and setting out his gear. The horse set to cropping the thick grass and shortly Pyrrhus had Rain turned out beside him, similarly divested of tack. The southern style saddle was unfamiliar, and it took him a moment of study to figure out the arrangement of straps and buckles.
“Yer from the Isle, aren’tcha? I hear it’s all civilized, inns every mile an’ food just growin’ wild. Ever camp rough out before?”
“Clearly not as you’re accustomed to doing.” Pyrrhus watched as Caleb unpacked several pieces of bent metal and set to assembling them. He set it on a large flat rock, added some smaller ones for bracing, and then with another flicker of essence lit the wick of its fuel reservoir.
“It ain’t so hard, or I’d been dead long since. Lemme set this t’cooking an’ I’ll show you how to set up camp proper.” The metal pieces had been packed into a small pot; he filled it with water from the spring and added the contents of a packet from his saddlebags to it.
While it simmered and cooked down into something resembling a meal, Caleb walked Pyrrhus through the process of arranging their bedrolls against the walls of the grotto that had absorbed the day’s heat, which would help keep them warm through the cool Southern nights. He shook his head over Pyr’s lack of any sort of coat (“I know it don’t make any sort of sense, but ya do need somethin’ for the nights an’ early in the mornin’, afore the sun gets properly warm.”) and came out of his packs with a length of thick woven, garishly patterned red fabric.
“This’ll do ya until we get to the next town.”
“Thank you.” Pyrrhus pulled the sarape over his head and arranged the folds over his shoulders. It was true, as soon as the Sun had vanished beneath the walls of the grotto the air had gotten noticeably cooler and he was going to be glad of the thick wool before long. They hobbled the horses and settled down to wait for the food. Pyrrhus had been happy to let Caleb fill the silences this far with his cheerful prattle, asking the occasional leading question when the flow ebbed. Now, though, as Caleb took a last drag of his cigarette and rubbed out the stump into the dirt, the silence rose.
It wasn’t a bad silence, maybe a bit awkward, but the quiet sounds of the desert crept out and eased it into something more companionable. The horses browsed, insects in the cracks of the walls began to sing, and the tiny flame of the camp stove hissed and popped.
“What was it like? When ya…” Caleb finally asked, tapping his forehead significantly. “What’dya do?”
“I and my friends - my Circle - stood alone against a demon of the second circle and his army while we were yet mortals. We were certain we were going to die, but we had to give those we protected a chance to escape.” He remembered the sea of hungry darkbrood, hulking and waiting in the shadows of their master - Octavian, the Living Tower - and the looks traded between the five of them.
Renault, Gaelen, Akaris, Jamie, still burning from her own second breath of Hesiesh. He remembered that feeling of inevitability, of taking a stand with the thoughts, “This is where I end. Is it worth it?” echoing through his head. That feeling never lost its sense of weight, of importance, though he’d walked with it a dozen times or more since.
He remembered how time stood still and brilliant light poured through him, how Sol Invictus stood before him and touched the spot where his caste mark now burns, spoke the words that still drive him. How power filled him to overflowing, coalescing into his Soul Forged armor just above his skin, flickered weapons into his hands with which to defeat the creature.
“And then the world went blinding gold. And we won.” Pyrrhus glanced over the deepening indigo shadows at the other man. “Yours?”
“Was a man takin’ what didn’t belong to him. Land, livestock, women - didn’t matter. Nobody wanted to cross him as he was richer than the Empress an’ crueler than Malfeas. An’ he had the blood of the dragons. He came for the town I grew up in, the last little bit o’ my family left. An’ I wasn’t there.” Caleb shifted on the rock he’d taken for a seat, leaning over to check the food. “Soon as I got word, though, me an’ my boys came for ‘im. Most of ‘em, weren’t because we had any noble ideas o’ being heros. It was fer the jade an’ the silver, an’ the notoriety. If we could take down Mezir! That’d be something.”
“Did you?”
“I did. The boys didn’t make it. We went home, an’... an’ I saw first hand what he was doin’ to the people he ‘owned’... I mighta gone a little mad. I don’t remember much. Sunlight an’ fire an’ thunder roarin’ in my ears, both pistols in my hands.” Caleb yanked the pot off the camp stove, snuffed the tiny flame, and poured the thick soup into their mess kits. He passed one to Pyrrhus and the two of them sat quietly with their memories for a moment.
“Anyhow!” Caleb finally said with slightly forced cheerfulness. “I’m still here, an’ he’s not, an’ that’s what matters. No more Mezir’s in my desert.” He set to his food.
“True. We’re still here.”